


someday, someday

by alynshir



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types
Genre: 2nd Person, F/F, F/M, Family, Fatherhood, Found Family, Gen, Introspection, Motherhood, Parenthood, ben wyatt voice its about the FAMILY...., bisexual morrigan, morrigan is bi, relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-19
Updated: 2019-11-19
Packaged: 2021-02-12 19:49:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 4,397
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21481864
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alynshir/pseuds/alynshir
Summary: morrigan and alistair are very different people, but they love their children just the same.
Relationships: Alistair/Female Mahariel (Dragon Age), Female Mahariel/Morrigan (Dragon Age)
Comments: 6
Kudos: 17





	1. you have my eyes

**Author's Note:**

> i do not own dragon age. i also do not own 'dear theodosia', which this piece was inspired by!
> 
> this fic contains reference to two relationships - morrigan's, and alistair's. these relationships will be explored much much further in a future longfic so be on the lookout for that :) morrigan is romantically involved with shay mahariel, my warden and the hero of ferelden in this worldstate. alistair is romantically involved with caryn mahariel, who belongs to kali @kalidels and who becomes part of the DA:O party in aforementioned fic. shay and caryn are both daughters of the mahariel clan, but both were raised in the sabrae clan as per the mahariel origin!
> 
> in this worldstate, alistair is a grey warden, anora is queen, and the hero of ferelden lives, "secretly" romances morrigan (bioware i know what i'm about), and goes through the eluvian and raises kieran with her.

your son. your _ son_.

it has been days now only; not even a week, it has been four days, ten hours, thirty-six minutes, you cannot stop counting; to lose track of a single moment of him is insanity to you. to miss even a single flutter of his eyelashes, to be absent for a beat of his heart, once you would have laughed at this, once you would have scoffed at it, at this devotion you saw in only the weak-minded, only in the faithful, but here you are, and it has been four days, ten hours, thirty-seven minutes and you think as you hold him close, hold him tight, breathe as he does, you think that were anyone to wrest any of his time from you in this moment, were anyone to try, you would be stronger than you had ever been, and you have never felt more faith than you do now, here, with him nestled into the crook of your heart.

he is quiet now - a rare time, you note, and it is this rare time that allows you to think for so long, and it's strange yet not that you can't even muster the thought to be even mildly irritated at the loss of quiet. silence and solace raised you, they kept you safe and taught you patience, they built you to be strong, you thought - you _ know _ \- , and before you thought, strength is in your solitude, strength is your boon and your burden alone, and before, you thought to have it stolen from you would be a curse, but now it is different, and not the same at all. he cries, and it is brash, it is headsplitting and earwracking and sends birds soaring disgruntled from the trees, and yet you do not hear weakness and you do not hear any of the things that you were taught condemned you, you hear none of that in his vulnerability - no, you hear strength in it, and you hear trust _ , _ you hear him cry and you hear him saying _ , i need you, and i know you will hear me, and i know you will help me. _

_ hah. _not even a week old, and he knows you better than anyone ever will, and he knows what will make you weak, and oh does that terrify you at first - or it did, when you thought about it too much, when you thought about being tethered, being known, being able to be seen and used, but perhaps your son is the abomination that some would call him, because he has had you enthralled since he first cried, since he was placed in your arms by a faceless old god for the first time, since he looked up at you with eyes like yours, since he looked at you with unconditionality.

you don't remember when you stopped crying as a child, exactly; it must not have been long after the incident of the mirror (a sister of which you keep close now, a golden mirror that you keep close, one of the only things you allowed yourself to keep close after you left, to remind you of love in moments of weakness, to remind you of hair nearly as golden and eyes twice as bright, of vicious strength and clever mind and callused hands and gentle touches). one too many times did it not matter your wound, one too many times had your sadness be met with scorn, and you had learned what the solace taught you then, you had learned that there would be no open arms, there would be no comfort, there was nothing that came unattached and nothing that came without tangles of strings. the witch, the wilds, the world had taught you that the love you received - if you can call it love, calling it as such gives it more credit than it is due, truly more of a mockery of the concept you have never seen -, you were taught that love and to be cared for was conditional and you had listened, because you did not know how to be heard - 

but he knows how to be heard, and you laugh to yourself thinking about it; your thumb traces his sleeping cheek - your son has no trouble at all making himself heard, and your son does not know what you were made to learn, your son does not know that so much of this world will be held out of reach, but you have had the world held out of reach, and you have learned to claw it back, and you will teach him, you will give the world to him and… he will never know your world, you decide, he will never know what it is like to hold himself together the way you have, he will never be raised by silence, he will never know isolation from the goodness hidden in the wicked roots of the world, your son knows how to be heard and you have learned to listen through sunny days and stormy weather, he is your son and you are his mother and he will know what it is like to be looked at with love. he is your son and he will grow up free, he will grow up in the world you tear down and rebuild to be better -

_ oh _, and he opens his eyes, as you think this, he looks up at you with those eyes you know, with your eyes, and he looks up at you, still sleepy, he looks at you with unwavering trust, with expectancy, with unconditionality, and he is four days, ten hours, thirty-nine minutes old and you are already full up with pride, with more than pride, with this feeling of sunlight through rushing water swirling through your chest and your heart and rising up in your throat so you cannot even speak his name, you can only lean down and kiss his cheek, and then the other, and he looks at you and you realize that you have never seen your eyes so bright, and they shine because they are his, and it is because he knows he is loved, and oh, you will never let him forget that he is loved.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks for reading!! please leave kudos/a comment if you liked it, it's so deeply appreciated!! my dragon age twitter is @witchesgonewild, follow for more DA screeching (mostly shay/morrigan yelling with a dash of everything else!)


	2. you have your mother's name

your daughter. your  _ daughter _ .

you never imagined you’d get the chance to even think a phrase like that, let alone say it, let alone have it be true. your daughter. daughter. you’re a father, now, aren’t you? you sit outside the door, test the words in your mouth, in your mind, on your tongue and lips, to see if they fit, and Maker, you can hear your wife laughing at you already,  _ yes, Alistair, that is how children work, to have a daughter you become a father, it fits because it is what we have made fit _ \- and the door opens and you scramble to your feet and your stomach twists in a way that’s both terrifying and thrilling, you’re a father now, you have a family now, a family, and oh, Maker, you’re so sorry for how many times you think you’ll be taking His name in vain today, but truth be told you have a lot to thank Him for at the moment, so you think He’d understand, and -

they welcome you in, the healers do, and they’re smiling and congratulating you, and that’s a good sign, right, of course it is, they’re not saying anything bad, you think, and you would have heard in no uncertain terms if it’s a bad sign, they guide you to a chair in your own room, you are sat down next to your wife - your wife, and you feel your ribcage crack and open wide like griffon wings to make room for how your heart swells when you see her, a sheen of sweat still on her forehead, her wild hair in damp curls on her forehead tangling with her vallaslin, you reach out, she’s smiling up at you,  _ she’s beautiful,  _ she says, her voice hoarse, her voice happy, she looks up at you like you’re all the world to her and you’re lost for a moment in her eyes, warm and rich and flecked with green, alive like the Brecilian, and then she looks away, looks towards the healers, and you look too, and as you feel her fingers lace with yours and as you raise your entwined hands to your lips and brush a kiss to her knuckles, you hear a soft cry in a voice not yet weathered by the world and suddenly you are

_ terrified _ , because she’s real, she’s here after these months of waiting, and wondering, and knowing in some semi-permanent way that she’s real, but now she’s a real person with little arms and legs and Maker, what if you drop her? what if you break her? you’ve done some practicing already, when nobody could see you, but you’ve still never actually held a baby before, and this one is yours, so dropping her would be even worse, right, they approach you with a bundle wrapped in Warden blue, you can feel your heartbeat quickening, your wife squeezes your hand tight, and you can feel the excitement and enthusiasm bubbling from her even though she says nothing, stay calm, stay confident, nobody  _ else  _ needs to know you dropped the wheel of cheese twice yesterday - your wife releases your hand and you’re extending your arms, you think you’re breaking a sweat, time seems to slow,

and...oh. then she’s in your arms, and she’s so  _ tiny.  _ you knew in theory the size of a baby, kind of - not quite as big as a wheel of cheese, bigger than a loaf of bread, but somehow those comparisons fall by the way as your arms naturally curl around her, around your daughter, your little girl, and as you look down at her, her eyes bright and indignant and demanding from you a world you would do anything to give her, you laugh, your voice breaking, your cheeks dampening,  _ she has your nose,  _ you hear your wife say, reaching forward to wipe a tear from your cheek, and you try to answer with how unfortunate that is for her, but you can’t say it, you can’t even begin to imply your little girl is anything but perfect, anything but Maker-sent, Creator-blessed, your daughter, your  _ daughter.  _ Something in your heart melts, and then forges itself anew - family, you have one now. Imagine that - no, you don’t have to imagine, you lean down and your chin is trembling, you kiss your daughter’s forehead, and when you pull back she is looking up at you, her little hand reaches up for you, you let her grab at your face, at your nose - her nose, she can have it, she can have anything from you, you are hers now - and your throat is tight and your cheeks hurt from smiling and you hear the music of your wife’s laughter as she wraps her arms around yours and leans into your side and  _ Maker _ -

you had never known family, truly, only a shadow of it; you had been born to blood that had painted a target on your back and left you to rot in stables and in anonymity, left you nameless and motherless and fatherless in the name of politics. you had known mother only by the Chantry name and known father by history books and legends, you had been thrown into the mud of Redcliffe and left to the mercy of the world, and had found the world had no kindness to give just another bastard, found only cold shoulders, cold winters, cold temples and churches and cold orders. family seemed like something for other people, love even more so, but.

as you sit here in this chair, your wife at your side - your wife, your love, your heart - and your daughter, your perfect daughter that you helped create, your daughter with your nose and your wife’s last name (since yours was born to you a burden and has since been taken by the queen, and good riddance at that), as you sit here, you know nothing but warmth, you know nothing but this sunburst in your chest, you know nothing but love and you know your daughter will have the world, your daughter will never know cold, your daughter will always know love, will always know what it’s like to have parents who love her, who would do anything for her, your daughter will know that for all that you’ve done, for all of your triumphs, she is the greatest thing that you’ve ever had a hand in creating, and when the Maker takes you and asks what you have done to earn your place by his side, you need only to say your daughter’s name, and you will be welcomed, welcomed with open arms.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks for reading!! please leave kudos/a comment if you liked it, it's so deeply appreciated!! my dragon age twitter is @witchesgonewild, follow for more DA screeching (mostly shay/morrigan yelling with a dash of everything else!)


	3. if we lay a strong enough foundation

you stand at the precipice, and it’s like it was once, but so much more. and what an odd, patchwork crew you make, standing in the garden, in the twilight, here where the sky is kept:

you stand tall, as imposing and beautiful as you always have endeavored to be and subsequently always have been, your hand on your son’s shoulder - your son, your beautiful son of ten years, three months, thirteen days, six hours, fifteen minutes. he looks up at you and gives you a little smile, one you have memorized since he was months old and first learned to do it, a smile that could melt winters, before looking away. 

your warden stands next to you, arms crossed, shoulders back, new scars mottling with old, your warden stands not touching you but close enough to, and this is always how it has been, even before you both knew, and this is how you like it, this is how the two of you like it. your warden catches your eye, her dark eyes glinting with bronze in the golden hour, and raises an eyebrow, jerking her chin, asking a question you wouldn’t be able to put words to if you tried, and you wouldn’t try, this is how you like it, this is how the two of you like it. your eyes follow hers, and you see…

...your son, as clever and well-mannered as you have raised him, is pulling faces at his cousins  _ again,  _ and they’re pulling faces right back, and what wonderful supervision they have, you think, crossing your arms and sending a look towards your friend, someone you might call sister both out of sentimentality and marital kinship, the mother of your son’s cousins and they who have become his friends, his closest confidants - something of which you will be grateful for, and something you will never speak of. she smiles back at you, a tight-lipped, twinkle-eyed thing that you think  _ must _ be a Mahariel thing, and must infuriate just about everyone in the world who isn’t in love with one of them. the warden-huntress shifts ever so slightly, elbowing her esteemed and heroic husband, who sees the children and grins - a stupid, buffoonish smile, you think on instinct, but you suppose some unfortunate soul might find it charming. he sees you looking, and he smiles even wider, cheekily, as if he can see the derision seeping from your pores. maybe it is. stranger things have happened since you and he first met in the depths of the wilds, in the depths of where was once home. things as strange as slaying an archdemon, as the sky tearing open, as having children, as finding love. to you, all of them seem equally unlikely, and yet here you both are.

you look him over. his hair is longer than you recall it being, curling around ears you never noticed angled slightly more than the average human’s, sprinkled with strands of silver already, although you are his senior by a handful of years yet. time has found him even if the Blight might never do so, but it has found him gracefully, something you might hate to admit if you could truly muster the bitterness of your youth. time has found him, and time has made you soften. like a rotten apple, or a corpse.

(your warden gently pokes your side, as if she could hear the direction of your thoughts, you cast her a look over your shoulder that would send battle-hardened men running. she meets your gaze with no hesitation and casual challenge, a smirk playing on her lips. just as she has always looked at you. you scoff a bit before returning to your observations.) 

you catch his eye again. he seems to be looking at you just the same, surveying you for something you yourself aren’t sure you’re looking for. he widens his eyes a bit as he notices you staring back, as if feigning some sort of innocence you’re both too old for, but he doesn’t look away immediately, so you don’t either. perhaps you’re both too old for this sort of thing too, you muse, this sort of...barbed snipery that you do. it has been more than ten years since its origin, since you were both near-children who knew nothing and carried the weight of the world, and here you still are, more worn, more wise, more willing to listen and more willing to learn. you certainly are, at least. you have learned to listen to the world, and to others in it, even if it has taken you a decade.

and things are different now. things have changed since then. you know it in your bones, and you think maybe he knows as well, has known. 

Alistair once-Theirin breaks your gaze, then, looks at his wife, then, and you almost want to vomit at the sight, but it’s more embarrassing than just ‘he loves her and it’s obvious’ - it’s that he loves her and you know exactly how it feels to look at someone like that, you know exactly how it feels to be looked at like that. you realize with a bit of a jolt that perhaps some of your resentment towards him during the Blight may have been jealousy of a golden boy you knew would find happiness, would find love, even if he himself doubted it. you hadn’t been wrong, but you don’t feel the ashen, vicious spite that coated your insides like the corruption itself, in your mouth now. his gaze flickers from his wife (you can almost hear him extolling her virtues in real-time; his wife, his love, his dearest - someone should tell him, you think, that he doesn’t need to remind everyone that Caryn is his wife anymore, since they’ve been married nearly a decade already) to his children, and you can see the sun rise behind his eyes and shine through him in the smile that curls and softens on his face, and oh, blast and damnation, you know that feeling too. you know it like you know each freckle, each scar, each memory of a scraped knee or a bruise, on your son, you know it like you know your son’s cleverness, like you know your son’s eyes - his eyes that were once like yours, but are overflowing with mischief and trust and an ancient sorrow you will never be able to understand.

perhaps you are not so different, you and Alistair.

_hah_. a ridiculous notion in itself. no, you and he are more different than the stars in worlds that don’t belong to you. but perhaps not where it counts, you think, stars no matter how different still persist in shining just the same, and you meet his eyes once more, and there is a solidarity there you have never seen before from him, there is a strength and a promise that you understand in the place where your very soul is tethered. it’s a promise you will make to him, and it’s a promise you know he will keep.

where it counts, you understand. a better world, for them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks for reading!! please leave kudos/a comment if you liked it, it's so deeply appreciated!! my dragon age twitter is @witchesgonewild, follow for more DA screeching (mostly shay/morrigan yelling with a dash of everything else!)


	4. we'll pass it onto you, we'll give the world to you

nothing like something tearing a hole in the sky to bring a family back together, you think. and what an odd family reunion it is, and what an odd family reunion it always has been.

you stand as tall as you are able to, even with the Blight hanging heavy on your shoulders as it does so persistently nowadays, and you hope you look strong, look sturdy, look like a man who can be trusted and relied upon, a man who can protect and who can mean safety. that is the man you’d always hoped to become, isn’t it? a man like how you always saw Duncan, really, a wise man, clever, brave, heroic, someone who is looked up to and someone who is respected but not pandered to.

you think you’ve achieved all of that, and you hope wherever he is, he’s proud of it.

your wife (you try not to get too giddy at the term; it  _ has  _ been nearly a decade, you’re sure someone’s sick of your eternal honeymoon heart by now, but it’s not something you can help, and it’s not something you’re truly willing to lose, especially in these dark times, so you decide to be giddy anyway), elbows you gently, and you see your children, your beautiful children, your perfect daughter and perfect son - spitting images of their mother, you like to crow from the rooftops - making horrendous and absolutely hilarious faces at their cousin, who’s making faces back - at their cousin, Kieran ...Mahariel, you suppose, although you realize you’ve never really asked if your delightful witch friend had a last name. you’ve always thought that just the one name was more intimidating, for a Witch of the Wilds, and maybe she thought so too, or maybe, like you, had no desire to be connected to those you were told to call family. 

sometimes family is better found, you think. even if it does get you a sort of sister-in-law who would turn you into a toad. or would have. perhaps that threat’s passed, now, considering all that’s happened.

the years have changed Morrigan, too, you realize, as your gaze drifts from her son to her, perhaps more than she even realizes. she’s glaring at you as you look, but you don’t see the venom in those golden eyes that you’d been so afraid of as a younger man, so you don’t look away, and instead grin at her. she looks as disdainful as ever, so you grin more. you notice she stands just the same as she always did, although you think maybe now it’s less bravado she throws her shoulders back with, and instead, more true confidence. her hair is cut differently - maybe with an actual pair of scissors, you guess - and makes her look softer, but then again, you think she’s softer than she thinks she is, and you think time has given her back a heart that perhaps you'd been too lost to ever see to begin with.

although you wonder if that heart has something to do with Shay. you’re validated as you watch Morrigan’s eyes start to darken at some distant thought, and before they can you see your oldest friend, your sister-in-arms-and-in-marriage, poke the legendary and mysterious Witch of the Wilds. she glowers at her warden, but you’re not stupid, or at least not nearly as stupid as she once considered you, and you feel almost smug as you see that telltale peace and that unmistakable exasperated love wash over someone you realize you’ve never once called your friend.

and perhaps you’ve never been friends, really, but hasn’t it been long enough? haven’t you and she been through enough together, don’t you share enough to be family and to be friends? maybe you’ll call her friend instead of ally soon. at the very worst, she’ll hate it, and it’ll be entertaining, but in your heart you don’t think that will be the resolution of it - you know her better than either of you are willing to admit, and you can see as she sizes you up just the same as you are doing, the resentments she held close to chest dissolving into the wind, and the ones you held go with them.

the children are still making faces, and you see her glance back at her warden, as you know she likes to call Shay - you’ve been around long enough to pick this sort of thing up from people, you’re more intuitive than people give you credit for, and you see the looks they pass. they’ve always had some odd kind of language that you’ve never been able to read, but the translation is one you’ve seen far too often as of late, one you’ve seen steeped into all of Thedas as the world is slowly and savagely torn asunder - that look of comfort, of reassurance, of letting the other carry your heart and your worries for but a moment. you know that look like you know the back of your hand, and then she strokes Kieran’s hair from the tuft of dark feathers it so often tousles into, and you’ve never seen the woman look so gentle in your life. you know that look, too - not only do you know it, you feel it, that feeling of sunset, of steadiness, of determination and quiet joy and yearning for rest. you feel it in your bones.

maybe you’ve never been so different, really. on the surface, yes, but you realize that maybe all along, you’ve just been two sides of the same coin, always fighting to stay in the sunlight, always fighting to feel this warmth neither of them ever thought they’d get.

or maybe not, you think, as her eyes return to you, intense as ever, maybe not so similar, but where it counts, you know your heart beats the same as hers. when she looks at Kieran, when she looks at Shay, when you look at Caryn and the family and perfect little world you’ve built with her - it’s all the same, and that’s where it matters now, when it comes down to it - this fight is about where your heart is, and the world that comes after will be shaped in kind.

where it counts, you understand each other, and you meet her gaze strong, unbowed, bright with resolve that you see reflected. a better world, for them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> end of the line! thanks for reading!! please leave kudos/a comment if you liked it, it's so deeply appreciated!! my dragon age twitter is @witchesgonewild, follow for more DA screeching (mostly shay/morrigan yelling with a dash of everything else!)


End file.
